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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174620">I Love How Your Soul is A Mix of Chaos and Art</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawsinthevoodoo/pseuds/flawsinthevoodoo'>flawsinthevoodoo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Avengers Movie Night, Avengers Tower, Behold there is no Canon Compliance here, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon has been fully roasted at 400 degrees and picked over for all the good bits, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Barton Feels, Clothing Stealing, Deaf Clint Barton, Domestic Avengers, Human Disaster Clint Barton, M/M, Protective Natasha Romanov, They all get therapy, or "borrowing" as Clint calls it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:02:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,745</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174620</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawsinthevoodoo/pseuds/flawsinthevoodoo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is basically a 5+1 where Clint "Borrows" a great many hoodies as a coping mechanism and Bucky decides Clint needs to be a part of his life, not just his laundry.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>159</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Love How Your Soul is A Mix of Chaos and Art</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelypassingtime/gifts">merelypassingtime</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a Gift for merelypassingtime from the Winterhawk Wonderland Exchange. I had an absolute ball writing this, and Kate, who beta'd this, was a delight and any mistakes you see are the result of my own ham-handed fingers.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <strong>One</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Clint knows it's not rational to be taking Bucky's clothes, it's just, he's been through a lot,ok? And against literally all odds pulling on the weird,stretched out, sometimes torn hoodies of an ex-murder machine calms something of the wild animal inside of him. Well his judgement should already be suspect; his two best friends are an assassin and a guy who's so scarily competent he's up to run a whole spy organization. And hell, he's an ex-carnie assassin for hire/spy-sniper cum 'superhero' who got his brain put through a blender by an actual facts god not that long ago, so really this is not the weirdest thing he's done lately--it's not even the top ten. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s just something about the way the hoodie swamps his chest and fits his arms,but covers his hands to make little sweater paws, the way all of Bucky's clothes had a scent of something sort of piney and </span>
  <em>
    <span>safe</span>
  </em>
  <span> that relaxes him. So yeah, it’s not good form to steal from teammates, but a man’s gotta sleep right? And thus far Bucky’s clothes have been the best sleeping pill anyone can prescribe for his fucked up little brain, so it’s hard to feel guilty when he’s actually getting sleep in periods longer than ten minutes after a day or two with Mr. Murder’s clothes. And really Bucky had no business having clothes this soft, like how did he get anything done swaddled up in stuff that felt like baby blankets? Clint was doing him a favor removing these from his proximity, right? Besides he always gives them back. Eventually. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Thievery somewhat shakily justified to himself, Clint buried his face in his current acquisition and hunkered down for a nap in his little corner of the vents. Perfect example of mental stability? Nope. But hey, it’s working for him these days so he’s not gonna challenge it.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Two floors and one vent system away from the napping sniper, Bucky is returning to his room after a therapy session that absolutley wiped him, he feels raw and fragile in ways he hasn’t since the first days he began remembering how to be Bucky. Something in his skin feels light, stretched too thin and he knows he’ll go crazy, crazier, if he doesn’t get himself a little more under control. He decides that a good long hot bath with some of those scented salts Stark insists on stocking while he reads a mindless novel about idiots in love might just be the ticket. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He strips down quickly and efficiently leaving his clothes in a neat little pile across the room wherehis designated dirty clothing lives, some things that the soldier left with him were useful he guesses. Shrugging a little to himself he goes to his open closet, a monstrous thing filled with the endless things Stevie and Stark keep trying to get him to wear. He pushes past the suits in garish colors and clothes that “looked like they didn’t belong on a murder hobo” to find what he had mentally termed the hoodie sector. He reaches for his Favorite Hoodie, still reveling in the ability to have a favorite anything, and touches something...wet? What the hell could have gotten onto his hoodie in here? He pulls his fingers back to see and finds them coated in bright purple paint. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stands there naked and baffled for a moment. Wasn’t Stark’s super robot butler creep who lives in the walls supposed to keep everything out?  And of all things for someone to break in to do, getting paint on his hoodie seems like a bizarre choice. Any tension he had been relaxing out of himself comes back full force. Someone had been here, someone he hadn't let in, didn’t know about, didn’t see or sense. It would be unsettling on any day, but today it’s just too much. He can’t handle this. He sightlessly grabs any clothes that are near him and will cover him, not paying any attention to what they were. He and Stark were going to have a long talk, a very long talk about how private his “private floor” really was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Two</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span> After the absolute verbal thrashing Nat had given him when she found him with more and more of Bucky’s clothing, Clint was more careful about what he took and tried to launder it before giving it back. He figures that taking a hoodie that Bucky had already discarded was probably on the more okay side of the spectrum. At least he hopes it is he really doesn't get on Nat's bad side. Not because he’s scared of her like half the population, though he supposes that would be healthy, but because she gets this look on her face that's not pity and it’s not disappointment; it’s just sad, like you kicked a puppy and stole from a toddler sad.  And a sad Nat is just wrong on so many levels that no matter how fucked up Clint is feeling he tries to avoid it. This is all to say that the sweaty crumpled hoodie he stole from the corner of the gym while their resident super soldiers were sparring should be alright on the Nat moral scale because he has been good, but he hasn't really slept without nightmares in about ten days and he's a little desperate. And at this point Clint is sure that if he asked Bucky for a hoodie he would totally give him one. But he would almost definitely ask why and the man is dealing with his own nightmare circumstances and brain meddling; he doesn't need the shitty parade that is Clint's issues coming through town. So while he felt a little more cautious and a hell of a lot more guilty for taking them, it seems like theft might be the better part of valor these days and besides, isn't Doc Benton always telling him to try and get things he wants, not just the bare essentials? So there. He's following the therapist's advice.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>If Bucky wasn't so familiar with the sensation of losing hold on reality, he thinks he would truly believe he was going crazy because this is the third time this month that he has been one hundred percent certain that he put his clothing somewhere only to go to get it and find it gone. Once could have been him losing time or just forgetting, both of which are symptoms JARVIS and Doctor Benton and Stevie were on the look out for, so he feels fairly comfortable it’s probably not that. He is now almost certain that someone in the tower is "borrowing” his hoodies. Why though? Stark had reviewed Tower security and found no anomalies but suggested that he might have an admirer which is patently ridiculous. Half the time he doesn't even want to be close to himself, so someone wanting his stuff seems really really weird. Maybe they're part of some sort of ritual or something; he knows fuckall about magic and Wanda freaks him out too much to ask her. Dr. Strange on the other hand is a prick, so Bucky would pretty much only contact him if the planet was actively on fire. Anyway, for magic he assumes they'd need to keep the stuff they took, not return it in various states of disheveled and stained. It's not like he needs the hoodies, but he likes soft things now that he's allowed to have them and if he's honest with himself, which he does try to be these days, the not knowing, not having control over his possessions and his environment is making it really hard to settle in here and establish ‘roots’ like he keeps getting told he needs by everyone, from Stevie’s well-intentioned nagging to Dr. Benton's long winded lectures on the subject. With that thought weighing him down Bucky goes to hunt down Clint. One of the few things that has been able to make him feel settled in his skin are the competitions the two of them get into on the range; they are absurd and probably not what anyone meant when they said get a hobby but, hey, it's progress and he likes shooting things where he doesn’t have to kill anyone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>
    <em>
      <strong>Three</strong>
    </em>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don't call out the Avengers for just any mission these days. New York City alone had enough superheros to field multiple teams for any given crises. On top of that, Bucky isn't cleared to join them on missions very frequently which is something that suits him just fine, thank you very much. But there were still moments where they called for the whole team, slightly broken 100 year old super soldiers included, so Bucky keeps in the habit of having a go bag packed with the basics in case, well, in case almost anything happens. He's had to make due for so long in so many facets of his life that if there is any way to prepare and not have to jury rig something, then Bucky was one hundred percent going to do it. And he was so, so certain that he had thrown a hoodie in there to pull on post battle when the touch of his battle gear would probably make his skin crawl, but after dumping the whole bag out onto the quin jet floor he could safely say it was not in there.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Natalia or Natasha or whoever she was these days watches his search seeming amused until Banner(No, Bruce, he wanted to be called Bruce) takes pity on the groggy man pawing at his bag like it could spontaneously generate a hoodie,and reaches over with a cardigan that looked as soft as kitten fur grasped in his still shaking hand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Here, I've got a spare," Banner rasps.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky winces at the rough sound of the man’s voice but gratefully takes the sweater, which proves to be even softer than expected. He takes a minute to shed his vest and belt pouches, putting away his guns and knives before wrapping himself in the cardigan. While it strains across his shoulders a bit, it actually fits him mostly. Petting the soft cuffs with his fingertips he gets lost in the texture as he tries to seal the battle back up in his mind. He was almost done compartmentalizing when Tony stark's grating voice came blasting through the coms.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey there soldiers and soldierettes, how’s everybody doing over there? Because, heads up, we’ve got a couple of wounded over the other jet, so we’re probably going to be landing in kind of a hurry."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Startled and a little upset that he hadn't thought to check, Bucky scans the jet, taking in the state of everyone on it with him. Nat is battered and has blood on her cheek, but he’ss 98% certain that it is someone else's. Bruce has sequestered himself as usual and is leaning back with his big fuck off headphones on and eyes closed. Sam is holding his shoulder in a not so great way that probably meant he was in pain but Stevie had already stopped and talked to him and he didn't have his "I have failed. I should have protected him better” face on, so it couldn't be that bad. Steve looks like he'd barely broken a sweat, the bastard, and his eyes are clear and untroubled. For a moment Bucky thinks that’s everyone, but then he spies a set of familiar muddy boots sticking out of the row of seats near the back. He holds up a finger to stop Steve's answer to Tony as he prowls to the back of the plane.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Clint?" he asks, trying to keep the confusion out of his voice."Aren't you supposed to be on the other plane? How did you ever get over to this side of the battle you were stationed five blocks away?...and you can't hear a damned thing I’m saying, can you?" he finishes when he sees the bright purple hearing aids/coms laid out next to Clint's head that is, when he leaned in closer, pillowed on something that looked suspiciously like the hoodie he was missing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Suddenly a lot of things seem to make some sort of sense, but he can’t help but get angry. He had talked to everyone about the missing clothes and it was bothering him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He starts up the breathing exercises the doctor keeps recommending to keep his temper under control and still finds himself getting irritated until Nat comes over leaning into his space in a way that no one except Steve or Barton would attempt.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"He's been running back to back to back missions for three weeks now; I'm surprised it took him this long to pass-out," she comments in that way that always says more than the words she provides -and he can read in her tone the threat--bother the sleeping hawk at your own peril.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He's still processing just how protective she is over the man that she spends so much time complaining about when she leans over him and drops a scarf she had in a belt pouch over Barton's shoulders. The unconscious sniper makes a snuffling noise and tucks the scarf into the pile he was sleeping on without opening his eyes murmuring, "Thanks ‘Tasha.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She meets Bucky’s questioning gaze with a flat look of her own.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"It helps him remember he's safe; he’s got something from Phil in that pile too," she states almost tonelessly this time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She looks calm to the untrained eye, but he can see some inner tension in her hands that tells him she is bracing herself for some sort of confrontation. But Bucky just hums an affirmative and moves away to go sit and tell Steve he could let Stark know they were all alright on this jet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His head is filled with thoughts too swirling and chaotic--Bucky can’t deal with this right now. It’s too much to deal with and he can’t figure out if he’s mad or touched, hurt or honored. So, as he is far too good at doing, he shoves the whole feelings mess in a box labeled ‘Deal with later’ and spends the rest of the flight home talking with Steve about the newest movies they would have to see as part of  “Tony Stark’s Guide to Living in the Now.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky is surprised the next morning when he opens his door and finds a neatly folded freshly washed hoodie with a note, clearly written hastily saying, "Thanks for not killing me for taking your hoodie.” It is signed with a bow and arrow so there can be no doubt it was Barton. He picks up the garment bemusedly, only to discover that it's a completely different hoodie in the same style and color. Well, he thinks to himself,  I guess I might not be the most fucked up one in this Tower after all.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>
    <em>
      <strong>Four</strong>
    </em>
  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bucky has come to accept that his hoodies are just going to disappear and reappear like something in Reed Richard’s labs, but that doesn’t stop his mind from tracking the clothing and laundry patterns of every resident of the Tower.  He has decided that he in no way ever wants to know why Thor needs to wash that much bedding and he feels for Banner as he desperately tries to maintain his limited wardrobe while also shifting into a big green behemoth every other week. The person he has paid the most attention to is Clint. And he will admit, he ends up watching Clint pretty much all of the time, not just when he might have stolen Bucky’s clothing. He can’t help that the man is often the most interesting thing to look at in any given situation. Clint is easily one of the most fun people to watch he’s ever observed in his life, and at this point he is positive that Clint has caught him looking an unreasonable number of times, but he can’t not watch. He would miss the funny faces he pulls when he drinks one of Tony’s shakes or the wide eyed wonder when he ate Bruce’s cooking. The little furrow of concentration that shows up on his face when he aims a particularly tricky shot which is the same furrow that shows up when he is trying to win an argument with Natasha. The casual way he draped himself all over every piece of furniture in range, but somehow maintained the personal space of everyone in the room. Natasha has caught Bucky watching and he almost stopped in the face of the look she had given him, something both familiarly intimidating and knowing, but Clint’s a legitimately puzzling combination of pure unadulterated skill and careless failure and Bucky can’t make himself look away. It takes Steve giving him a questioning look and attempting to give a stuttering talk about modern sexuality before he starts to think maybe he’s not watching Barton because he’s ‘interesting’ but because Bucky is interested. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had to hold his hand up to stop the deluge of sentences meaning that it’s ‘Ok these days to like guys and gals the same and get married and have kids’. He hasn’t really had the urge to take a dame out since, hell he can’t remember. And while he’s sure HYDRA has used his body to all sorts of shit, based on what he can remember, he hasn’t voluntarily gone on a date of any kind since at least  ‘42. And he’s never gone on what he would term a date with a man. He had certainly visited his fair share of establishments that served a certain clientele and got regularly raided for it, but a terrified make out session in an alley or a blowjob hastily finished off does not exactly count as ‘dating’. He ponders the thought, turns it over in his head. *</span>
  <em>
    <span>Do I want to date Clint Barton? I want to date Clint Barton at least I think I do</span>
  </em>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His face must do something interesting because Steve starts laughing at him and pats him on the back saying, “Good luck buddy” with a grin that reminds Bucky of when that little shit used to think he was being funny. Bucky glares after his chuckling pain-in-the-ass best friend and settles down on the edge of his bed to start to plan.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Five</strong>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Living in a tower filled with spies and other superheroes means changing a pattern of behavior is going to get noticed and commented on so Bucky begins his campaign of hoodie attrition by inches, ‘accidentally’ leaving a hoodie on the couch when he got up to get a snack, laying them out on the bench in the locker room,hanging them over the back of his chair. All things he thinks are subtle until he gets waylaid by Natasha on his way to helpfully leave a hoodie in the quinjet bay. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you mocking him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bucky splutters “Mocking him? Why the hell would I---”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay then you;re going to need to get a lot less subtle to catch this particular hawk”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean? Wait, are you helping me?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snorts derisively at him “I’m helping</span>
  <em>
    <span> him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and what he needs right now just happens to be what you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her tone has him smiling fondly at her, raising blurry memories of a spit fire little girl with a gift for takedowns. Her eyes tighten at what she reads in his face and she almost looks sad for a moment before she is back to smiling in a way that says “I will eat you alive and not even pause to chew” which would have anyone else fully on their guard but just relaxes Bucky for some reason. Which is definitely something he’s going to have to talk to Doctor Benton about, because this doesn’t seem like a healthy response to danger. He’s a little proud he even noticed that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He...sees best from a distant vantage point, he can see his targets with perfect clarity but what’s in front of his face? Might as well be invisible.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky frowns, brows furrowing in concern. What can he do to make this more obvious without scaring the guy away? Natasha just rolls her eyes at him and grabs his phone out of his pocket tapping at it with a scary amount of focus and returning it. If he wasn’t watching he would never even have known it had moved. She’s gotten better at that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While he reaches down to unlock his own phone and see what it is she had done Natasha disappears silently. She’s gotten better at that too. What she had done was order him twelve hawkeye themed hoodies and twelve winter soldier themed ones, which he honestly didn’t know had existed until right this moment. They said they would arrive tomorrow morning. Which gave him exactly 16 hours to figure out how he was supposed to use them. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clint knows he’s getting obvious about his ‘borrowing’ but his screaming nightmares on the nights when he doesn’t have something of Nat’s, Phil’s and Bucky’s make him more desperate and much more blatant. Last thursday he had taken the body warm soft hoodie directly from the couch Bucky was sleeping on. He was pushing his luck here but somehow...he just didn’t want to stop. So he ignored Steve’s knowing looks and Sam’s confused ones and just, kept on taking the hoodies. He gave them back, he always gave them back, but now lately he had so many in rotation that he honestly isn’t sure which ones he took when, and when he meant to return them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What finally stops him in his tracks is a patchwork monstrosity of two hoodies cobbled together but someone who maybe saw someone sew something once. It was garish, the Red and the purple clashed something horrible and they weren’t even the same type of hoodie so one side was thicker than the other and hung down a little further. Clint had to have it, it was a mess, it was perfect. He had just dropped from the vent moving as silently as he knows how too, still wearing his tac gear from a training mission earlier in the day when he notices something peeking out from underneath hoodie-stein. He reaches out carefully, knowing Nat is would have his hide for touching something this obvious, and gently tugs the piece of paper out. It reads in blocky handwriting “Follow us”.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now Clint isn’t an idiot, really he isn’t, he just has some impulse control issues that he’s working through and some other stuff but he does know better than to just obey random hoodie notes left in conspicuous places. But at the same time...puzzle. He cannot resist a puzzle, he knows it’s a flaw but dammit they’re so much fun and he deserves some fun, even if it leads to kidnapping or mayhem or something. Content that he was going to do soemthng utterly stupid and probably stupid fun, Clint pans the room looking for another note. A bright purple scrap of fabric sticking out of a console table drawer catches his eye and then a patch of red hoodie hanging on a door in the hallway. Bouncing a little on his feet, excited for the game, he begins his hunt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Seven terrible hoodie combos later Clint has been up to Tony’s lab, down through the sparring rings, into Wanda and Visions apartment and finally into Steve’s studio where the man himself just smiles and hands him a wrapped package.  There’s no tag,no note and Steve, screw him and his perfect face, wouldn’t say a thing. He unwraps the bundle to find the very first hoodie he had taken from Bucky, the soft snuggly grey one that gave him sweater paws with a patch of purple paint from a rouge pain arrow sitting from and center. But now the splotch of purple is larger and his logo, the one the PR guys made him come up with, is emblazoned across it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clint's breath catches in his chest and he looks up at Steve tentatively, afraid to hope but full of a desperate want. Because this couldn’t mean what he wanted it to mean, this couldn’t be some sort of overture, because that would mean Clint actually got something he wanted, got something that made him happy and he damn well knows that that is not how the universe works. But...but if it did, what if just this one time Clint got to be happy? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Steve’s smile is as gentle as the one he uses for small children in hospitals, and right now Clint feels about that fragile so he’s not going to call him on it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He would very much like it if you kept that hoodie and maybe spent some time with him and the other hoodies? He’s waiting in his room if you want to answer him, punk got too nervous to actually be here and not pace a hole in the floor.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clint feels a little uneasy “Does he mean, he wants me to take this one and go? Or I just...I’m not sure what to do with this, is this a friends thing? I don’t have that many friendships that haven’t started with them trying to kill me but this could be how those start...”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> There is something incredibly sad and understanding in Steve’s eyes, like he knows what it feels like to do the mental acrobatics to convince oneself that someone is their friend, like he knows how much it hurts when they’re not.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Clint” He sights rubbing a hand over his eyes wearily “He wants to date, he wants to spend time with you, hoodie or no hoodie, to take you out to do whatever it is people do on dates these days, to learn you and care for you. That man has the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known and he hasn’t wanted to do that with a single person for the past eighty some odd years so when he asks you? He means it, not as friends, though he’d probably settle for that, the self sacrificing bastard, but hopefully as something more.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clint doesn’t think a man who crashed his own plane into the arctic gets to comment on anyone else's self sacrificing tendencies but he keeps that to himself, it’s not like he’s really in a position to comment anyway and oh look he’s trying to distract himself from his feelings again, that’s not good. Should probably process some of those. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clint hasn’t let himself want anything more from Bucky than their occasional celebratory beers and shooting or their weird sniping contests. He hasn’t let himself lean into the pats on the back or that one very memorable slap on the ass. He doesn’t, he can’t, want that and have it taken away. He knows he’s not super together but wanting Bucky, and not ever being able to have him would have broken Clint, so he just doesn’t want. The same way he doesn’t let himself want to have Phil back on the team or Barney back anywhere. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now...now he’s allowed to have this? That seems too good to be true... wait, is it too good to be true?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey, JARVIS? You’re not running any weird simulations or anything right?” Clint asks voice hoarse, terrified of hearing the answer.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No Mister Barton. Everything in the Tower is currently very real.” JARVIS replies, somehow managing to sound confused, which is impressive for an AI.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh” Clint breathes and then sits down on the floor pulling himself together to process for a second. He waves off Steves concerned questions and concentrates on centering himself and letting himself feel hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a moment or two of Clint, remembering to be a normal human, his eyes fly open and he shoots to his feet. He had forgotten that Bucky was waiting for him, Bucky didn’t know his answer yet, Bucky, they great idiot still thought there was a universe where he wasn’t exactly what Clint wanted.And that? That would not do. Clint is no Pietro but he can move fast when he wants to and the vents of the tower give him shortcuts non one else is even looking for half the time. He reaches Buvky’s floor in under a minute, a personal record. He’s clutching the gifted hoodie in his hand like it is going to be taken from him any second. It’s a left over reflex that he didn’t even realize he still had. But that’s not important right now. Banging on Bucky’s door and yelling for him to come here is what’s important. The hopeful but tentative look on Bucky’s face when he opens the door. That’s important. The way he catches Clint as he careens through the air, coming in for a hug. That’s important. The way he pulls Clint close and doesn’t put him down as he moves back into his apartment, kicking the door closed behind him. That’s important. The way he mutters “Is this a yes, Doll?” into Clint’s hair is very very important. That and the fact that he already had pizza and DogCops DVDs laid out. That, that is shit that matters and Clint wants it to matter for as long as possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Yeah, Bucky” Clints laughs a little “This is a yes.”</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And One Time Where He Knows Exactly Where it is</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span> Bucky hears Clint's off tune humming and heads for the kitchen, or at least where the kitchen used to be. The sink is overflowing with dishes. The toaster is in pieces, he doesn't even want to know how that happened, and it looks like every single piece of cookware in the tower is in their kitchen. The coffee pot has through some miracle (perhaps a force field? That seems like something Stark would add) survived unscathed. And there among wreckage, bopping to a sound only he can hear, up to his elbows in a floury mess that might once have been food, but now looked closer to a grade school kids science project, is Clint and honestly he's the best thing Bucky has ever seen. He feels something warm and gentle in his heart that’s somewhere between fondness and love. If they were a normal couple there would probably be no telling how long he could have stood there while Clint puttered about in his chaos, completely unaware he was being watched, but they are far from normal and Bucky can tell from the set of his shoulders that Clint knows he’s being watched, even if he hasn’t decided to acknowledge it just yet. Bucky crosses the room to his wonderful mess of a boyfriend grinning and making just enough noise to warn Clint it’s him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clint folds in on himself a little and still doesn’t look up to see his boyfriend. He looks guilty and wary, two things Bucky hates to see in him, especially if he’s the cause. He enters Clint’s personal space carefully because he knows from painful experience that a wary Clint is a jumpy Clint and a jumpy Clint might just stab first and regret things later. He opens his mouth to say something to break the weird silence Clint is determinedly manifesting between them, but Clint gets there first.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ok so I know I made a mess and nothing in here looks edible, but I heard you sighing last week at the team movie night and I really really wanted to be able to give you something like that, even though like I am clearly not that great a cook?  But hey nothing is on fire, that has to count for something and--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky feels an overwhelming wave of love for this ridiculous man and just pure delight that he gets to have this, gets to keep this. It chokes him up a little so instead of interrupting the onslaught of words verbally, he just wraps his arms around Clint, burying his face in his hair and breathing in deep. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“--and you're laughing? And oh, hugging me? Oh this is nice." Clint snuggles deeper into his arms, suddenly loose and relaxed, a little grin on his lips. “So...you’re not mad that I pretty much blew up your kitchen?”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Bucky can’t help the bark of laughter that busts out at the question and pulls back so he can cradle Clint’s face in his hands. It’s an action that is quickly becoming one of their most common and coupley things they do. It gives Bucky eye contact so he can make sure Clint hears and believes him and it gives Clint the space to lip read so he can process better.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I am so far from mad at you right now. You...you wanted to do something special for me, something I wanted, but didn’t know how to ask for and you tried </span>
  <em>
    <span>so hard </span>
  </em>
  <span>even though you had zero idea what you were doing. I couldn’t be mad at you right now if I tried, alright?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fragile hope in Clint’s eyes makes him want to give him the world, makes him want to destroy whoever made it this hard for this sweet, idiotic man to trust he could be loved. He wants to swaddle Clint up and save him from everything that could hurt him. He knows that’s not a healthy thought, (Dr.Benton would be so proud) but by god does he want to anyway and he hopes something of that is visible on his face for Clint to see as they gaze into each other’s eyes like mooning fools. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It is in that moment that Clint’s stomach decides to express its displeasure, grumbling so loud that Bucky is sure that the other floors can hear it. He snorts and slings an arm around Clint’s waist to steer him out of the destroyed kitchen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come on Birdbrain, let's get you fed. I gotta’ feeling that nothing in this apartment is fit for consumption.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clint pouts a little but agrees, leaning into Bucky’s side and smearing a floury mess all over his hoodie. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“After breakfast we need to do laundry,” Clint notes. “You’re out of clean hoodies again.”</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I am. There’s two of us wearing them.” Bucky presses a kiss against the side of Clint’s head. “And that’s exactly how I like it.”</span>
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